Share this post

Link to post

Share on other sites

Guest Anonymous Poster

Guest Anonymous Poster

For clothing, I'm sure you can just paint different skins and load the right one at run-time. That's no big deal. Guns, knives, swords, change, lipstick, etc. would also be possible depending on how you want the character to carry them...are you expecting these things to ATTACH to the character somehow, like in a sheath? Then you need extra vertices on the model.

0

Share this post

Link to post

Share on other sites

Well, I've studied how Ultima Online does it. Note of course that Ultima Online is a 2D overhead orthoganal isometric, but the concept is the same overall.For each hair style, weapon, item of clothing, etc, you need an animation set for each movement the character will be making with that item, ie walking, swinging, guarding, blocking, sitting, etc. You have it a little easier because you don't have to do it for every possible angle of view if you set up your vertices correctly. These are then placed over the "base model" of the human figure, in the correct order, much like a paper doll, for each frame. For you, it would be something like dressing up a Barbie (or GI Joe depending on gender), with sets of vertices. The accessories are drawn relative to a base origin on the "basic model" so they show up in the right place. Each accessory only needs to be rendered once in one color for all possible motions, as color (and texture in your case) can be easily changed. Some of this you can get away with easily due to your medium, such as just coloring the torso for a tight-fitting shirt and moving some things such as helmets and armor relative to where the character's "skin" is, but many things, such as weapons, "flowing" clothing like capes, and anything else that can move somewhat independently of the character, are going to have to be done this way to look right.Can it be done? Yup, Everquest does it. Is it a lot of work? Absolutely. Is it too much work for you to do? *shrug* You tell me.I hope this makes sense. If not yell and I'll send you some examples.

Share this post

Link to post

Share on other sites

Ok, you guys prolly dont know who i am, I'm Comatose from Faldon. Faldon has "pastable" characters, with a body, hair, pants, shirts, gloves, boots, weapon, and shield. These are all rendered separately, then blted in the correct order. This same technique could easily be done for a 3d game, provided your artist is well versed in boolean operations (mostly boolean subtract).

What you would do is start with a body, hairless and naked. After this, you add hair and weapons and the like, which move with the body through the frames. This is one of the two solutions. It makes for many more character possibilities, but it makes for wasted polygons, as the body's are masked by the clothes's which are masked by backpacks and quivvers and the like.

Another option is to make the characters with every possible combination and save them as different models. IF there are only several types of armor and hair and the like, this is a better solution as it cuts down on render times.

The best way to do it in a true 3d environment is probably to have separate models for the armor/body combinations, then paste on lower polygon things such as weapons and hair.

Coma

0

Share this post

Link to post

Share on other sites

Guest Anonymous Poster

Guest Anonymous Poster

The difficulty with "accessorizing" as you describe is texture memory. If you are only going to have one of these accessorized figures on-screen at once (or if you're going to rely on software rendering), you can probably get away with it. However, with more than one such character on-screen, texture memory gets eaten up quickly. On hardware-accelerated systems, this can become a towering problem very quickly. Beware.

0

Share this post

Link to post

Share on other sites

I've seen accessorizing done in Final Fantasy 7, though I'm not sure it's exactly what you're looking for. Anyways... My thought is that the body parts (hands, torso, head/hair) are saved with the accessory "put on." Each part would then be loaded in as changed, replacing the older part. This would do away with having to change the entire body or wasting polygons or texture memory. One catch is that the character(s) movements should be limited so they aren't passing swords through arms or the like. Another is that different sets of poses would be needed for different types of weapons (guns, swords, staffs.) You probably wouldn't want to hold a sword the same way as you would a staff. <8o

[This message has been edited by SonicSilcion (edited August 25, 1999).]

0

Share this post

Link to post

Share on other sites

The way I'm doing it in my game is componentizing models into model blocks. Each model block will represent a thing like an arm, leg, or head. Model blocks can have children model blocks, which can be further specialized.

Also, model blocks can also have things called connection points. The connection points serve as points where other model blocks connect to. The points transform the block into the appropriate position.

That way, to have a character wield a sword and swing it, I only had to model one sword and the only thing I have to change to swing it is how the connection point transforms the sword. Get it?

That's how it should work in the engine I'm writing. I haven't tried doing stuff as advanced as swords, but the object in my test program has arms and a head (just blocks). http://members.xoom.com/mutex0 (Defy)

0

Share this post

Link to post

Share on other sites

Guest Anonymous Poster

Guest Anonymous Poster

Like Jered said, using skins for the clothing is the most practical solution. Other accessories such as hats, shields, swords, guns, etc can easily be handled using model hierarchy preferably with skeletal animation. You place a gun in the hand. when the character moves, the arm is a child of the body, so the arm moves, the hand is a child of the arm so the arm moves, and the gun is a child of the hand so the gun moves. Same with rotation, or any other type of transformation.

In my own mind, I would say that the above is reasonably easy, but doing things like chest plates etc that fully wrap the charactet - and having lots of them would be somewhat inneficient, and not worth the hasle.